


Altriusm

by PoisonJack



Series: Seven Heavenly Virtues [7]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Roller Coaster, General au, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Poisoning, Polyamory, i do not envy the decision jack had to make, its okay in the end i promise haha, poor babs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-19 20:38:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17008803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonJack/pseuds/PoisonJack
Summary: Rhys and Tim get poisoned by a rare, toxic plant with an even rarer antidote. Jack has one vial of serum and a choice to make.Migrating some older works from tumblr :) This is part of my Seven Heavenly Virtues series, to accompany the Seven Deadly Sins series.





	Altriusm

**Author's Note:**

> There’s so many opposites to the 7 deadly sins that I went with one of the general themes of each “virtue” on wikipedia lol.
> 
>  
> 
> _Humility- bravery, modesty, reverence, altruism_

Not for the first time in his life, Jack wished he would have nuked the shithole of a planet that was Pandora years ago. Make it a distant memory of bandits and bullshit. But this was the first time he really, _truly_ wanted to destroy the planet and everything on it.

Tim and Rhys both lay in hospital beds parallel one another. Both had been ‘bit’ by some near-extinct form of Pandoran snakeweed. It was a weird, carnivorous plant, long stripey blue and purple tendrils that lay out flat on the ground from a flowering white center. The ends of the tendrils had a long thorn on it that delivered a toxin to whatever touched it, resulting in incapacitating the victim and eventual death right on top of the plant making excellent fertilizer. It was native to dank caves and underground mineral systems.

It didn’t carry a high survival rate, nor was the antidote easy to come by being as how incidents were rare and the plant itself was on the verge of extinction. It was difficult for the plant to reproduce and the environment it needed to survive was generally destroyed with eridium drilling, otherwise hard for humans to even get to. Small rodents and reptiles, no problem. But run-ins with humans were rare.

Unless you were in the business of hunting vaults and checking out weird tips and places which resulted in run-ins with weird, alien life and needed a rare antidote. Tim and Rhys had stepped on it, and the tendrils naturally reacted by shooting up and jabbing each of them right in the leg, the thorn easily piercing the material of their trousers. Jack got them evac-ed very fast, destroyed the plant with a hail of bullets, and got the pair back to Helios where their conditions degraded. 

The plant was rare. The antidote for the toxin even rarer. He had one syringe. 

Jack had to make a choice.

“Tim…Timothy…,” Jack’s voice gently but firmly spoke, a hand on the double’s shoulder. “Hey, look at me, handsome. Come on now.”

Tim barely fluttered eyelids open, his vision disoriented as his eyes sought out Jack. He was tired, sluggish, everything slowing down and just wanting to sleep. It was what the toxin did, eventually causing the body to shut down and just stop working altogether. 

Balance went first, the victim immediately off-kilter with what Jack had read sounded like the drunkest vertigo anyone had ever had. They were incapacitated. Had to remain where they were, unable to do much more than crawl without becoming violently ill. Consciousness was the next thing to go as the toxin worked itself throughout the body attacking various parts of the brain. Next was autonomic nervous system; they would stop breathing, and if that didn’t kill them, then the shutdown of organs would. It was instant-death for small animals; humans took about a day or two in rare cases. 

Rhys had lost consciousness a few hours ago, and currently had a machine breathing for him. He was getting bad quickly. Tim was starting to go as well, but the double was still conscious. He had greater mass than Rhys; it wasn’t affecting him as quickly as the lithe, cybernetic man.

“Those idiot scientists brought me some antidote, sweetheart,” Jack spoke to the double without relief, stroking his cheek.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Tim commented tiredly, fighting the urge to close his eyes completely. They were barely open a sliver as is.

“It…” Jack choked on the words, clearing his throat gruffly as his hand came to pay at Tim’s shoulder. “It’s only…enough for one.”

Tim hummed as he felt Jack squeeze him. The CEO’s voice sounded awful. “Bummer,” Tim sighed, eyes closed now though he tried to still pay attention. The effort to keep them open was too much. “Give…give it to Rhys.”

“Tim…”

“He… It got him worse… Give… He needs it.” Jack’s hand squeezed him harder and Tim just barely opened an eye a moment before listening to the CEO’s voice. He’d never heard Jack sound like this before. He wasn’t sure what to make of the almost… scared? tone he was being spoken to with. Jack sounded helpless. That’s what it was. He was completely lost.

“Yeah, he got it worse, honey, which means this might not even help,” Jack told him as he held the syringe, voice hard already with grief. “He…he’s slippin’, sweetheart. I don't… He might not… It could work but it might not… It would _definitely_ fix you.”

Tim snorted out his nose, dizzy, tired, bewildered. Jack didn’t want to make this decision. Of course he didn’t. Who would? Tim didn’t envy him that. In Jack’s position, he wouldn’t want to make that decision either. But from where he was, the choice to him was quite obvious. “Nah… Jus… Just give it to him, Jack.”

“There’s just the one dose.”

Tim’s lips twitched at a smile, the pain in Jack’s voice so raw. “Yeah…”

“I’ve got those morons synthesizing more but the time it will take to make… Fucking…” The lab was making more, but it would not be enough for the time Tim had left. 

He could hear the pain in Jack’s voice, the sound of the older man fidgeting beside him. Feel Jack’s hand stroking him. This wasn’t easy, but Tim couldn’t live with himself if he let Rhys die. How could he possibly go on? If he had to choose between his own life and saving someone he loved, then the choice was quite clear.

“Give it to Rhys, Jack…”

“If I do, you’ll die.”

“If you don’t, he’ll die…” Tim smirked with closed eyes, heavy and tired but appreciating the severity of the situation. “There’s two of us, Jack… Only one of him.”

“Babe…”

“We've… I’ve done bad stuff… If you can save him, go for it… Yeah…” he murmured.

“ _Timothy_.”

The double took a breath, trying to speak fast while he was focused. “I can’t live knowing he died ‘cause of me… Do it, Jack.”

Tim could feel the CEO’s hand shaking on him before he let go, tried to look out at him but his eyelids were just too heavy. He could only see muted color and shadow from just-cracked lids. He relied on his hearing more than his vision for what was happening around him.

Jack injected the syringe into Rhys’ IV, and he felt sick as soon as he did it. He’d just signed Tim’s death warrant. And there was no guarantee it would even save poor Rhys. He was going to lose them both and be all alone. He knew it. He just knew it. He squeezed Rhys’ hand and kissed the younger man’s forehead. _Please_ pull through _please_.

Jack returned to Tim’s side to stroke the double’s hand again, to stay with him while he was still coherent and conscious. It wouldn’t last for long though. Just like it hadn’t with Rhys.

Tim could feel Jack’s movements, hear him making sounds of grief. Tim wished he could will himself up to embrace the CEO, nuzzle him and say sweet things, even if Jack would tease him about being a softie for the fact. “Hey…” Tim murmured to him from his pillow. “Heroes don’t cry… What’s that?”

“Shut up, idiot,” Jack told him, bringing the double’s hand up to his mouth and kissing the back of his palm. It got a smile from the exhausted other man. Jack held Tim’s hand to his lips until the younger man lost consciousness.

The CEO stayed close even as Tim needed to be hooked up to the same machines Rhys had. The cybernetic man was eventually taken off the machines, his vitals doing quite well even as Tim’s flagged, and Jack was caught between joy and grief as he sat there between the two, just waiting for the inevitable as his stomach turned and his heart pounded, being devoured inside by grief.

–

It was entirely too hot. Boiling even as Tim opened his eyes. Everything was too bright, too. Stifling. Heavy. What was this?

A movement of his head discovered Jack was on one side of him. And Rhys was on the other. They had him between them, and he was still in the hospital bed he remembered being taken to after the run-in with that weird plant thingy. 

His head was pounding and he was super thirsty, and he was trapped under the blankets by the men sleeping on either side of him. He was disoriented but mainly just uncomfortable. His fidgeting eventually woke them, both wide-eyes with relief and joy and touches to make sure it was real. 

Rhys cried. Jack affirmed he did not indeed cry, but that there was hospital lint in his eye. The double wiped away tears from the ‘lint’ anyways as the three were overjoyed to be properly reunited.

Tim was told amidst kisses and tears that as his condition had deteriorated and Rhys’ only improved, they’d had to hook him up to a whole crapload of machines to take over for whatever piece next was failing. The CEO had refused to let him go, buying him whatever time he could including blood-flushes and organic bots until they could get a serum in him. 

That Tim had held on so long completely baffled the doctors and scientists who’d been helping ensure his survival. Jack told him he had had more robotic parts in him than even Rhys and did he know they made kidney bots? Tim grimaced at that, but kissed the two of them back, glad they’d both pulled through and that Rhys was alright.

Rhys called him an idiot but also his hero for giving him the antidote instead of himself. Jack called them both idiots for stumbling on a rare, stupid plant anyways, and that the only way either of them were allowed to die was with his dick in them, so they’d better get used to the idea. Tim laughed and said he didn’t want anything else in him for a while after whatever it was the doctors had done, and Jack only frowned. 

Rhys told Jack to wipe that look off his face after all the worrying he’d done on their behalf, and both men touched and kissed the CEO, thanking him for getting them through everything and being their hero. 

Jack rolled his moist eyes at their praise, and Tim gave Rhys a sly look and suggested that once they were all home proper, they make Jack a CEO sandwich. Rhys gave Jack a filthy look and said that he could even have cream pies for dessert, and the older man called them “plant-stepping morons” who had no right to be thinking about fucking after what they’d been through and what _he’d_ been through and why did he waste his time with them anyways?

Jack hunkered back down moodily next to Tim and pulled Rhys with him, the CEO saying he was in love with a pair of morons. Said morons touched and cuddled him back and said they loved him too.

**Author's Note:**

> This one made me feel things i forgot i knew how to feel haha Poor babes. But by the power of fic it was all okay! bahaha leave a comment if you enjoyed ;)
> 
> [my tumblr](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/) | [my fic masterlist archive](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/post/134979026515/poisonjack-ao3-fic-archive) | [my twitter](https://twitter.com/PurgeThatUrge) | [my pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/PoisonJack)  
> (Just an FYI: you'll need to be logged in to tumblr for my blog to show up since it's marked explicit :D)
> 
> Please leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed! ao3 FAQ: [Can I post comments anonymously, or if I don't have an Archive account? ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/comments-and-kudos?language_id=en#anoncomment)


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